While this is a completely fabricated story, this will have truth behind it in mid-March. I’ll happily write a more accurate version for the Stranger… maybe submit it to The Kitsap Report.

Potential headline next month:

Hed: No Dancing at St. Pats Dash​ This Year

Subhed: Bremerton contingent has injured dancers, unable to show up and lead the city in a rokus good time

SEATTLE – The live band who showed up to play in the beer garden following Seattle’s legendary St. Pat’s Dash was sorely disappointed to see an empty dance floor this year.

Oh, there were hundreds of people before them in the cavernous Fisher Pavilion, but in typical Seattle fashion, those people stood around politely drinking their post-dash beers. They were leaving room in front of the stage for those who wanted engage in some high energy Irish jigging.

But no one showed up.

People got nervous. Frightened. THEY may have to step up and dance in front of hundreds of strangers. The crowd was at a loss of what to do.

Typically, for the past four years, right around 10 a.m., a group of six to eight wildly dressed folks in costumes usually consisting of tutus, ribbons and Lyrca, and mostly from Bremerton (a small Navy town across the Sound) step right up in front of the band and start dancing. Hard. Badly, but hard. They dance until the drummer is finally breaking down his kit. They sweat. They fall. They get back up. They drag members of the passive aggressive Seattle crowd to engage in animated fun.

The Bremerton Crowd outdoes the Ellen Selfie at the 2014 St. Pats Dash.

In the past, there have been willing volunteers, one dressed as a leprechaun, another with long orange braids, and another wearing a kilt and a spaceship kitty t-shirt, who needed no encouragement to jump in with The Bremerton Crowd.

But this year – it was quiet. The clinking of empty plastic beer cups used to construct beer towers was deafening.

“I wasn’t sure what to do,” said the band leader. “It may have been a small group but they were familiar, fun and welcoming and fed off our energy to get Seattle going. That’s a tough job because Seattle is a tough crowd.”

The band played on, much to their dismay, to a lifeless crowd of Irish and wanna-be-Irish drunks.

Further investigation uncovered The Bremerton Crowd down the street at The Five Point Cafe, where it was learned that Bremerton runners and dancers Kevin Koski and Tiffany Royal were nursing a broken pinkie toe and recovering from ACL surgery, respectively, this year.

“I figured we’re were going to make headlines this year for NOT being there,” Koski said, who is known for running the Dash backwards. “We’re bummed that we can’t there this year. We’d hoped Seattle would step up for us. It’d be hard for them to do but I had hope!”

Royal took a big sigh and shook her head.

“Typical,” she muttered and, then pushing back the green ribbons woven through her hair, she reached for her pitcher of IPA. She had no further comment.